The Legend of the Ship Captain's Box

By Gary Griffith

Since the death of her parents in a car accident, Vanessa's relationship with her grandmother splintered into a cantankerous silence. Along with her two kids-Maeve, a spunky 10-year-old, and Brodie, an inquisitive 7-year-old-Vanessa visits her Grammy Francis to interview her about the family history. Inside a secret passage in her 140-year-old home

• Language: English
• Publisher: Garitage Books
• Release date: Jun 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9780996196116

Gary Griffith

Gary Griffith has won numerous awards and accolades for his fiction, and his writing has appeared in online publications, including Storyglossia and Zinkzine. A Pushcart nominee, he has an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University. He is a graduate of the Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English. He is married, teaches literature and writing, and lives in Arizona.

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THE LEGEND OF THE SHIP CAPTAIN’S BOX

Gary Griffith

Garitage Books

SONOMA, CA

Copyright © 2015 by Gary Griffith.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Garitage Books

P.O.Box 436

Vineburg, CA 95487

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Book Layout ©2015 The Book Makers.

Editor: Teja Watson—Two Birds Editing

Cover photo used by permission www.hygra.com Antique Boxes.

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the address above.

The Legend of the Ship Captain’s Box/ Gary Griffith. -- 1st ed.

Ingram Spark Print ISBN: 978-0-9961961-0-9

Apple iBooks eBook ISBN: 978-0-9961961-1-6

Create Space Print ISBN: 978-0-9961961-2-3

Kindle eBook ISBN: 978-0-9961961-3-0

For my parents, Bill and Arline

and my children

Jeramy, Kayleigh and Maggie

1

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

—George Elliot

The past began whispering and it slowly wrapped itself around a lone fencepost in a pasture of regret.

Leah sat her tea on the table and saw the headlines in Frances’s lap. The print bold and pronounced, bounced off the page at her as she read: FIVE FAMILY MEMBERS PERISH IN HORRIFIC CRASH.

Can I bring you anything else Frances, a blanket perhaps?

When the silence crept back onto the veranda, she said, without raising her head, What did you say Leah?

I brought you your tea. Would you care for anything else, perhaps a blanket? Leah now noticed several tears blotting onto the old newspaper, stained with age. The photo showed a crowd gathered at the top of a deep gully and the caption read; the car, an accordion pleated mass of twisted metal lay where eight-year-old Billy Hendrix found the mangled wreckage Saturday.

Frances began to cough her raspy, dry hack and Leah handed her a tissue.

A blanket? No thank you, I am enjoying it out here this morning. It must be ready for spring to arrive because I can feel it in my bones. My granddaughter and her children are coming soon. She hasn’t been around in a while.

It will be nice for you to see them. I’m going inside to attack those breakfast dishes. Just push that button on your wrist if you need me.

She settled her frail body back into her wheelchair staring at the headlines and said to herself, I am sorry I pushed you away, Vanessa, I was so consumed in my own grief, I lost you somehow. I burnt the dinner, didn’t I? I missed my twins, their spouses and Emily. I wallowed in my own depression for so long, bathed in it, when you needed me so much. I have been such an ornery mule. Raising her head from the clipping, she took in a long gaze down slope to the linear row of Canary Island Palms to the river and her mind meandered into the past, her granddaughters racing their horses out of the barn, down the lane to the river to swim in the summer. They both hated their piano lessons but eventually became gifted at it.

She interrupted the silence and said aloud, I never told them how proud I was of them. Her head swayed in dismay and said, Frances, you allowed yourself to be a grumpy old woman and it became a habit.

An Anna’s hummingbird began to scout the trumpet vine on the veranda, which was reaching east. Her thoughts, now bathing in the bird’s musical hum, its scarlet coat and wings of harlequin dancing in the morning sun and said to the bird, Good morning Claire, yes I know, I must make it right, it is time.

She folded the faded news clipping, placing it in her folder and placed her tablet on her lap and with her shaking arthritic hand, took her thoughts into the morning breeze and began to write.

March 11, 1997

My Dearest Vanessa,

If you are reading this letter, I am in another place. No worries, I am fine. I want you to know that I love you, Vanessa, and your chickabiddies, so terribly much. I am writing this to you because I know my fate awaits me with every one of my breaths, I feel it deep inside waiting.

There is a ship captain’s box in a hidden passageway in my home and it holds the story of my great-Grammy Claire. This box traveled to California with her at the beginning of the gold rush and holds her story about traveling in a steamship around Cape Horn to California and the many challenges she faced once arriving in San Francisco. In case something happened to me before your visit, I didn’t want to leave you and your children without her story. Like Maeve, I wanted to interview my Great-Grammy Claire. At the time, she was near the end of her life and had not finished her story. She promised me she would finish her story someday. Unfortunately, she died before finishing it. I learned that she and my great-grandfather were true adventurers and they had a passion for adventure, discovery, love, and family.

The last challenge of the box took me years to discover. There are six secret compartments in the box, where you will find my Great-Grammy Claire’s story of the man she loved and lost, along with her most prized possessions. I had hoped for years to add the last pages she wrote to her book, but then I could not physically get to the box. Sometimes life just gets in the way and sometimes life just walks out the door.

Vanessa, I am so very sorry about the way I have acted toward you after your parents died. All that was good in my heart, I guess, just dried up. I am embarrassed by my behavior and I hope that you could find it in your heart to somehow forgive me.

My longtime friend David Birkshire will be contacting you, as he is the executor of my estate. Watuppa Grove is now under your loving care. Following your dreams is important Vanessa, and I know you will teach that to your children, so they too can find their voice and their sacred place in the world.

I love you Vanessa and your chickabiddies,

Grammy

2

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.

—Cormac McCarthy

March 9, 1997

Vanessa found her thoughts wedged between despair and redemption. She knew what needed to be done yet her past kept confronting her future.

Grammy Frances used to call her chickabiddy. She does not call her chickabiddy any longer. When Vanessa was fifteen years old, she stopped. In fact, Grammy pretty much stopped everything by the time the crash came along. Vanessa remembered her Grammy wailing between her own heaving sobs. Everything important in their lives vanished. Vanessa lost her parents, aunt, uncle and her cousin Emily and her Grammy lost her children and her granddaughter in that one horrible moment.

After the funeral, the reception was at the family home, Watuppa Grove. As Vanessa sat in the porch swing, she gazed out to the river, into the fading light in the amber of winter. She wrestled with her childhood memories: playing in the barn on the rope swing, with her cousin Emily, for hours, while the odor of manure and feed hovered over their senses and butterflies tickled their stomachs; waking up on Christmas morning with hot chocolate and sticky buns; riding horses in the woods. Now everything morphed into her own silent shadows.

Grammy, her skin bunched around her red, swollen eyes, carried a pained stare throughout the reception. The one thing she said to her granddaughter was, Your father loved Watuppa Grove and I see that in you, and now you are all I have left of your father. It was if Grammy was trying to peel off her father’s layer of the onion, and discovered Vanessa there. At that moment, Vanessa felt naked without her parents.

Vanessa and her Grammy were all that now remained of the family. And Grammy slowly drifted away from her granddaughter, becoming over time a cantankerous and insensitive old woman. Because of this, Vanessa’s heart camped on the perimeter of anger and something lost. Over time, the empty space that separated Vanessa from her Grammy grew into a deep canyon.

First came Maeve and then Brodie, her two little lovelies, she called them. The birth of her children began to fill the painful abyss in her life, and in time Vanessa began to carve a new path with her children.

It took Vanessa three days to collect her courage to call her Grammy to ask if Maeve could interview her for her California Gold Rush project. She spent those days running random scenarios in her mind, most of which leaned south of positive. How would Maeve and Brodie react if Grammy became insensitive to them? How would Vanessa herself react? Finally, with measured courage, Vanessa made the call.

Hi, Grammy! This is Vanessa.

Yes, I know who you are.

The kids and I have missed you. How are things? Your health?

I am 98 years old and I am tired, so is my health.

Well, Maeve is hoping she might interview our family gold rush expert for her fourth grade California Gold Rush project.

I was thinking it might be time for me to tell that story. When are you coming?

It depends on my work schedule, but when is best for you?

Vanessa, I sit in the same spot each day, waiting for the day to end. If the Lakers are playing, then I wait for that. The last time I checked, my calendar is open.

Will the weekend after next be okay? I have that weekend off.

That’s fine Vanessa, see you then. Bye.

When the phone clicked, Vanessa hung up the phone, thinking, damn—same shit different day. She felt as if a suit of armor was starting to enclose her entire body, protecting her from her Grammy.

Walking away from the phone, Vanessa said aloud to herself, You better be nice to my babies, or I will put them back in the car and leave Watuppa Grove and never come back.

3

Truth is something you stumble into when you think you’re going somewhere else.

—Jerry Garcia

Dark clouds billowed in from the south and stacked against Sonoma’s Mayacamas Mountains, and Maeve began to count down the minutes until school was out. She had been dreading the coming weekend ever since her first-semester conference with her fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Green. Waiting for the bell to ring, Maeve once again went through the list of equipment she was to bring to her great-grandmother’s house. She was dressed in her Girl Scout uniform, and was excited about her meeting after school—a woman from Girl Guides in British Columbia was coming to do an art project with them. But her worry about her interview with her Grammy kept gnawing at her. She glanced at her tennis shoe, teal and tattered, and began to tap her foot, her fingers twirling in her Irish ginger curls.

Mrs. Green’s voice climbed above the class to be heard. Okay, children, you have ten minutes. Let’s finish up and pass your papers in. Don’t forget to put your names on them.

Maeve, are you going to Dayanara’s birthday party tomorrow? her friend Sophie asked. We’re going to ride horses in her grandfather’s vineyard.

Maeve stopped tapping her foot. I had hoped to go to the party, but I’m interviewing my Grammy for my Gold Rush project and this is the only weekend we can go. The interview sounded like fun at first but now I’m kind of scared.

She’s your family, Maeve, how hard can it be?

She’s 98 years old, I hardly ever see her, and besides, I think even my mom is afraid of her. When I was in kindergarten, she came to the Thanksgiving feast and complained to the teacher that dressing the children as Indians was degrading. I remember Toby Johnson teased me for weeks.

Girls? Mrs. Green interjected. Are your papers organized to go home? Her voice rose to address the class, Children, don’t forget, we’re reciting our poems next week. Gathering her things, Maeve looked out the window to see the spring wind howling through the old conifers in front of the school. The limbs danced violently in the turbulence. The children stirred with excitement, and Maeve shivered. The wind brought a deep, rolling thunder, and hail fell out of the afternoon sky in torrents, right as the dismissal bell rang. The children rushed out to the playground, getting drenched and trying to catch the hail in their mouths. Maeve found her younger brother, Brodie, on the playground, soaked and wild-eyed.

Brodie, you’re soaked and we have to go. Mom is waiting for us.

Brodie, playing chase with his friend, ignored her.

Maeve shouted over the sound of the storm, Mom is going to be really angry with you, as she turned into the hallway to find her mother. Speaking through her teeth with a forced restraint, Maeve shook her head, saying, Boys.

Suddenly, in a blur, Brodie streaked passed her in the hallway, yelling, Now Mom is waiting on you, tortoise girl!

That evening, after putting Maeve and Brodie to bed, Vanessa’s memory drifted back to her childhood with her Grammy at Watuppa Grove. Grammy would say, Chickabiddy, have I told you how much I love you today?

Vanessa thought, Grammy used to call me the spunk of the family. What happened? What did I do? But she knew her Grammy was as unpredictable as the weather, and she wondered how the weather would be when they arrived at Watuppa Grove the next day.

As the children slept, her mind continued to meander to her childhood, and the trips she took with her grandmother and her cousin Emily. Vanessa’s mind quickly jumped to the memory of the accident, over a decade ago.

It was a strikingly beautiful day, falling into a new season. After the family Sunday dinner, Vanessa left to join her friends at the theater to see A Christmas Carol, despite her family’s persistent teasing to join them all in playing dominoes at the Elk’s Club. Driving away in her 1965 Volvo, she almost changed her mind, remembering playing dominoes with Grammy Frances. Think of doubles, chickabiddy, Grammy would proclaim.

It was the twenty-first day of December, the Solstice, teetering between the darkness and light. That was the first year the family did not visit Grammy and Watuppa Grove for Christmas.

Vanessa’s cat, Mr. Jones, interrupted her thoughts as he bunted against her leg. Her mind rambled, erratic, curving into Grammy. After years of therapy she had learned to recognize there were just some things you could never control or bring back, like her parents, aunt and uncle, and Emily. She had to find her courage to move forward. Ultimately, she had to take the same journeys everyone did, to find what haunts their past.

She stewed upon what tomorrow would bring for her children. What lasting impressions will Grammy lay before them? And how will I react if Grammy treats Maeve and Brodie badly? And what will Grammy share about the family’s past?

She forced herself to take slower breaths. Her memory traced over time, recalling a time when she and Emily were 10. The girls were at Watuppa Grove, riding horses, and Vanessa asked her cousin how Grammy’s great-grandparents had come up with the money to purchase Watuppa Grove.

Emily said, I overheard my parents once say something about a boulder of solid gold. Then, biting her lip, she quickly retreated. Vanessa, please don’t ever tell anyone I said that.

Vanessa’s memory resurfaced into a different time, when the cousins were in their early teens. Grammy had taken them on trips to Seattle, and across the country to New York. One year, Grammy flew them both to Detroit, just so she could drive her new Oldsmobile off the assembly line and drove back to Watuppa Grove.

Her mind then floated back to the Catalina trip and the bird park. The memory brought a sly smile to her lips. Both girls were nine years old and Grammy was bent on seeing this bird park; the only way there was by bus, up a mountain. Emily and Vanessa set off on their own, and they found a wishing well full of coins. Emily had the idea to lean into the well and harvest the coins at the bottom, and